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Google Apps Marketplace – Use these Free Apps for your business now!

March 11th, 2010 1 comment

Google has just launched the Google Apps Marketplace. Because most DzineClub Hosting packages come with Google App for Domain emails, you can now use these apps for your business. Some of the recommended ones are:

Zoho CRM


https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewListing?productListingId=2533+17854168373705313802
Zoho CRM offers businesses a complete customer relationship life-cycle management solution for managing organization-wide Sales, Marketing, Customer Support & Service and Inventory Management.

TripIt


https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewListing?productListingId=3492+14195420367568577649
TripIt helps employees travel smarter by organizing their travel plans no matter where they booked. With TripIt for Google Apps, there are many things employees can do to improve their travel…

  • Use TripIt to organize and share their travel
  • View travel plans using gadgets and mobile phones
  • See who’s traveling where on a company travel map

ManyMoon – Free Social Productivity, Project Management and Task Management

http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewListing?productListingId=3539+9922984539899306906

Manymoon is the #1 team collaboration application for Google Apps and is trusted by thousands of businesses. Put your social network to use to securely get work done, instead of just talking about it

  • Attach Google Docs to tasks, projects and events
  • Add project information to shared Google Calendars
  • Gadget for collaborative task mgmt in Google Sites

Check out the video for its features

Aviary Design Suite

https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewListing?productListingId=3442+17116012818275486668

Free design tools and templates to create, modify and share images, logos, presentations, audio tracks, podcasts & more. Teams can collaborate on multimedia projects. Works directly in Google Docs.

  • Create Logos, Slides, Business Cards & Letterhead
  • Retouch photos, Make Web Templates & Banner Ads
  • Develop Podcasts, Remix Audio & More

Productivity with the Pomodoro Technique – Get rid of procrastination

March 11th, 2010 1 comment

The Pomodoro Technique - focus

There is a lot of distractions in today’s day. Work is usually not the most fun part 😉 so we tend to get involved in Facebook statuses, Twitter tweets and going to the internet and looking at stuff.

To stay focused and remove procrastination, one of the best techniques is the Pomodoro Technique – developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 80s. The idea is to work continuously on a single task for a certain period and then take a quick rest. After 4 intervals (pomodoros) you take a longer break.

Pomodoro technique recommends doing work in 25 minute intervals and taking a 5 minute break.

Basic Steps in implementing the Pomodoro Technique

  1. Decide on the task to be done
  2. Set the pomodoro timer to 25 minutes
  3. Work on the task until the timer rings
  4. Take a 5 minute break
  5. Every 4 pomodoro’s, take a longer break (25 minutes)

Tools – Watch, paper and pen

  1. Write your task down
  2. Set the watch/clock/timer to beep in 25 minutes
  3. Start working on the task
  4. After the timer rings, stop for 5 minutes

Tools – Software

Focus booster

focus booster is a great free application to put the pomodoro technique to practice. It is an Adobe Air App so will run on all systems. It is very sleek and easy to use. You basically start the application and click on play until the time runs out. Then you get a 5 minute break and then start again. You can adjust the work time and break time as you wish. If you do not wish to install the application then focus booster allows you to run it live from the browser. This is called focus booster live!
Focus Booster - the Pomodoro Technique
Grab the desktop application here: http://www.focusboosterapp.com

Use the live browser version here: http://www.focusboosterapp.com/live.cfm

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